Monitoring Overhead Irrigation Infrastructure
“With INCYT’s irrigation motion detection system I now have a reliable, inexpensive solution that does exactly what I need it to do and it gives me peace of mind that I know when a lateral is stopped so I can take immediate action when needed.”
Type: Dryland and Irrigated Cropping
Crops: Potatoes, Maize, Wheat
Size: 430 acres
Wayne Tymensen has been using lateral irrigators for over 15 years on his farm, but had been unable to find an alarm or alert system for these systems. Without an alarm or alert system, Wayne never knew whether a lateral was working correctly or if it was stopped and in need of help to get back on track.
One day in 2024 Wayne did an online search for agtech that could help him monitor his lateral irrigators and found INCYT’s irrigation monitoring system with the Antares tracker. It was very cheap compared to any other system out there and offered everything that Wayne was looking for, and so he ordered an Antares tracker with irrigation monitoring.
With Antares trackers now mounted on his lateral irrigators, Wayne knows exactly whether a system is running or stopped, and receives an SMS message as soon as a problem arises. Because of this, Wayne has less loss-of-time when irrigating and is able to stay on schedule, which is especially important during the hot periods when the irrigators need to be running 24/7 to keep up with the demand for water.
Farming in the Koo Wee Rup Swamp
The Koo Wee Rup Swamp was located to the South East of Melbourne and, after it got drained in the late 19th century, it is now a highly productive agricultural area giving growers the opportunity to grow a large variety of crops. One such grower is Wayne Tymensen, GMT Trading, who farms 430 acres just to the North East of Cora Lynn, producing potatoes, maize and wheat. With an average annual rainfall of over 900mm the area can be considered a high-rainfall area, but growers like Wayne do still irrigate their crops as well, he explains: “Because the soil here is very fertile we can really push our yields, and the crops we grow require a lot of water, especially potatoes and maize, so we still apply between 3 and 5 megalitres of water per hectare in any given season.”
Wayne continues: “During the height of summer it is important for us to keep the water up to the crops, and our irrigation infrastructure works continuously during this period of time. We really can’t afford an irrigator to stand still when we’re full-on irrigating, as that would get us behind on schedule and it’s hard for us to catch up again later. Most of our potatoes go Sydney to a potato crisps factory or Melbourne for potato chips used in fish & chip shops, and both clients have very precise quality and size requirements, so we can’t leave our potato crop without water for any stretch of time when plants are growing the new generation of tubers.”
Monitoring the Irrigation Infrastructure
Because farms in the Cora Lynn area aren’t as large in other, lower rainfall, areas of Australia, efficiency is key for growers like Wayne in order to maximise profit from every single acre : “My dad was one of the first growers in the area to buy an Upton linear irrigator, and I was one of the first adopters of GPS in this area as well. Both technologies have such clear benefits that they really were no-brainers to us and we got on-board as soon as we could. Lateral irrigators have the advantage that you don’t waste a single acre on square fields (as opposed to using pivot irrigators) and so they fit exactly with what we’re trying to achieve on our farm.”
In order to farm with no full-time staff and only the help of his partner and a couple of part-time employees, efficiency is key in everything Wayne does. But being by himself most of the time, means that Wanye doesn’t have time to constantly check up on his 7 lateral irrigators: “During summer there’s often 5 of the 7 irrigators working at any given time, and having to baby-sit them 24-7 is simply not feasible for me. I need to know that they’re stopped when they’re supposed to be stopped, and I also need to know if they’re stopped when they’re not supposed to. Previously I had no way of knowing what was going on exactly, meaning that I had to spend a lot of time just driving around to check on things. With INCYT’s irrigation monitoring system in place now I get alerts on my phone as soon as an irrigator is stopped, and I can also check the INCYT app at any time to see exactly what they’re doing and where they are at any given time in the app.”
Finding the right solution
Wayne had previously worked with a company to try and devise a solution, but that didn’t work out and so he was on the hunt for something off the shelf that would suit his operation he says: “I knew I wanted something that is simple and inexpensive, but also reliable at the same time. And reliability really is key here; I need to be able to rely on the alarms to tell me when something is going on that I need to address. I happened to just do some online searching and came across INCYT. When I saw how robust the products look, how inexpensive they are, and what it can offer me - I knew this was a product I had to try. I spoke to the team and ordered a couple of systems to try for the first season, and now have them fitted on every irrigator we own. We have also started to monitor our pump runtime as well through INCYT.”
Wayne continues: “For the irrigators we use INCYT’s ‘Antares’ tracker as it’s powered by an external 12v power supply straight from the irrigators, meaning that we can set them to high reporting frequencies without running out of battery. The installation was very simple, I just did it all myself and it’s not hard at all. I did speak to the INCYT team at various times and those interactions were great which gave a lot of confidence in working with the company.”
Wayne concludes with: “Keeping the lateral irrigators going 24/7 so we don’t get behind on schedule and lose yield potential in our crops is key, which means that we need to monitor the irrigators constantly. With INCYT’s irrigation motion detection system I now have a reliable, inexpensive solution that does exactly what I need it to do and it gives me peace of mind that I know when a lateral is stopped so I can take immediate action when needed. Just by giving me that peace of mind from an irrigation perspective, INCYT has a huge impact on how I run my farm.”